1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a method and an apparatus for aiding planning, development, design, and estimation of an environmentally conscious product. In particular, the present invention relates to a plan aiding method and apparatus for carrying out environmental impact estimation and cost estimation effective in planning multi-generation products.
2. Description of the Related Art
With the development of trade and industry, due to the greenhouse effect caused by increasing exhaust gases, there have been a variety of problems such as global warming, destruction of nature caused by the tremendous amount of waste and environmental pollution caused by toxic substances. Thus, it is important to reduce the environmental impact of industrialized nations on the earth.
In considering the environmental impact of industry, it is insufficient to focus just on the manufacture of products and process up to the shipment of the manufactured article. Attention should also be paid to the discarding steps, including recycling.
It is required to plan environmental impact reduction from the viewpoint of a product life cycle from manufacture to discarding. There has been increased importance placed on the technology for developing products so that the environmental impact of a product life cycle, from manufacture to discarding of the products is reduced more reliably than conventional methods. It is anticipated that a design aiding technique for product design that places most importance of such a life cycle processing will be developed.
A technique of calculating environmental impact, or environmental load concerning the entire life cycle of products—LCA (Life Cycle Assessment) exists, as specified by ISO 14040.
This LCA calculates “environmental impact”, i.e. affects on the environment, such as CO2 (carbon dioxide gas) or NOx (nitrogen oxide) generated in the life cycle of products (inventory analysis), and estimates environmental impact (impact analysis). Therefore, there can be supplied environmentally conscious products capable of realizing the design solution (product and product life cycle progress) of the LCA, and reducing the environmental impact if the design solution is improved based on the estimation result.
However, the conventional LCA technique averages and calculates the environmental impact of a single product. In this technique, for example, in so called multi-generation products in which one product model is manufactured as a product of a basic design being modified over multiple generations, in the case where products are recovered to remove specific parts, and the removed parts are reused in a series of the same products, it must be assumed that the supply quantity of reuse parts and the necessary quantity of parts thereof are well balanced.
Namely, in the case of considering reuse, multi-generation products in which one product model is developed through partial improvements over multiple generations is most suitable. This is because new products are often composed of the same parts as the constituent parts of old products. Such product manufacturing of multi-generation products denotes that there are products, which have been used and become unnecessary, are recovered, the constituents of which become available for reuse.
In recent years, as represented by a film with lens (disposable camera), so called reuse of parts in which discarded products are recovered and dissembled by manufacturers, and the dissembled parts are reused as parts of subsequent products is requested for other manufactured articles.
For manufactured articles, constituent parts are standardized, thereby enabling wide and general reuse of parts without being limited to multi-generation products.
If the conventional LCA technique is applied for that purpose, the technique must have been utilized assuming that the supply quantity of reuse parts and the necessary quantity of the parts are well balanced.
However, the impact that the actual reuse of parts has on the environment greatly depends on the balance between a supply quantity of reuse parts and the necessary amount of parts derived from a quantity of manufactured products that incorporate the parts.
Namely, if the supply quantity of reuse parts is smaller than the necessary quantity, the number of new parts must be increased. Conversely, if an excessive amount of reuse parts are supplied, they must be discarded. Therefore, in order to precisely estimate an effect of reuse of parts on the environment, thereby achieving product manufacture with less environmental impact, LCA must be carried out in multi-generation products in consideration of the quantity of manufactured products.
That is, in order to precisely estimate an effect of reuse of parts on the environmental impact, the LCA must be carried out in multi-generation products in consideration of the quantity of manufactured products.
This applies to where material recycling is performed in a series of the same products.
In addition, for calculating the entire cost of the life cycle of one product, the concept of life cycle costing (LCC) is adopted.
LCC denotes the cost of the entire product life cycle from material acquisition to discarding. With respect to LCC as well, as with LCA, in order to precisely estimate the effect of reuse of parts on the environment, LCC must be applied to multi-generation products considering the quantity of manufactured products. Of course, this applies to material recycling of a series of the same products.
However, in conventional technology, conditions for reusing parts or material recycling have been met on the assumption that the supply quantity and necessary quantity of parts are balanced, thus it was impossible to precisely estimate environmental impact or the entire cost of multi-generation products.
That is, as long as products are manufactured as company activity, the manufacturing cost cannot be ignored. Thus, the manufacturing cost must be included within the range satisfied as economic activities. Therefore, companies need to manufacture products effectively in consideration of LCA or LCC. For that purpose, during development and planning of multi-generation products, it is required to enable realistic prediction while the supply quantity of reuse parts or recycle materials useable in a series of the same products is precisely reflected. That is, it is required to enable realistic prediction while events concerning reuse of parts or recycling are considered as uncertain factors.
However, the conventional technique originally assumes that the supply quantity of reuse parts and the necessary quantity of the parts are well balanced, and thus, realistic estimation cannot be performed.
Therefore, it is an object of the present invention to provide an environmental impact estimating method and apparatus and a program for, when products are manufactured considering reuse of parts or material recycling, precisely predicting and estimating the environmental impact or cost produced from a group of products in multi-generation products, making it possible to execute effective reuse of parts or effective material recycling.